Bleecker

Bleecker street is a north/south thoroughfare located in the heart of the St. James Town neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. When it was first proposed in the 1960s, this area was the biggest urban renewal project ever conceived in Toronto. By clearing a vast swath of crumbling Victorian properties in one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods, urban planners aimed to engineer the densest concentration of people in the country. In the 1950s, many of the Victorian homes of north Cabbagetown were seriously grim. Many of the rental properties were owned by unscrupulous landlords and lacked even the most basic utilities. At the time, the city still routinely referred homeless welfare families to the neighbourhood. Bleecker Street was first developed by Toronto’s housing company Cityhome and was converted to a co-op through the efforts of the residents in 1991. Since then, the co-op has improved its financial management, funded its reserves and upgraded the property to distance itself from its violent past. Bleecker highrises are home to many elderly and mentaly disabled tenants, and also house a large number of African, Chinese and East Indian immigrant famalies.